Alphabet Ikebukuro
by Threesmallcrows
Summary: 26 short stories about laughter, hate, love, war, business, pleasure, and life in Ikebukuro- and Shinjuku, for that matter. Contains all DRRR characters and hints of canon pairings.
1. P is for Perfectly

P is for Perfect(ly)

After a long silence in the empty middle-school classroom, in which both boys are supposed to be considering how they fucked up and how to not fuck up next time, they're still both pissed as hell and ready to fuck authority, fuck the rules, fuck it up, fuck each other up. Fists clench and don't loosen underneath the desks. The teacher left a few minutes ago, and that's the limit of how long they're able to hold it in.

Izaya breaks the air first, the chatty sixth-grader unable to resist. But the sentence itself is simple, almost eloquent in its shortness.

"I hate you."

An unusual amount of truth is in the sentence. Yes, later Izaya will be more curious than hateful of Shizuo. But at this moment, he hates Shizuo with a passion.

"I hate you too."

"Then we agree on something, after all. Shizu-cha"—

"Shut the fuck up."

"Or what?"

"Or I beat the shit out of you."

"My, my, Shizu-cha"—

"Again." Shizuo permits himself a nasty grin.

Izaya obliges and shuts his mouth for once. He can't really shut it all the way, since his lips are swollen beyond belief, along with the right side of his face. Normally, that would be the end of it. Even if Izaya loves teasing, he knows when to obey if it's helpful to him to do so, knows when to shut his mouth when confronted with authority. Of course he'll get them all back later, in terrible and subtle ways, but he has self-control. The conversation should end here.

But. Two problems. Shizuo doesn't give a shit, number one. And Izaya's pride has been wounded, because Shizuo has hurt him, and he's too childish yet to control himself fully, to wait and strike back and humiliate Shizuo beyond belief. So.

"Admit it, flea. I beat the shit out of you."

Shizuo's pushing it, he really is, thinks Izaya, while grinding his teeth in a merciless smile. Their motivations are transparent, their emotions so easy to read—Izaya's less so, of course, but they are only eleven years old, for God's sake.

"There's nothing to admit, Shizu-chan."

"GOD DAMN IT!" It's a roar.

"Jesus Christ, _Shizu-chan_." Izaya's pissing him off, again. "Lower your fucking voice a little, will you?"

"Fuck! I told you not to call me that, you tiny fucking piece-of-shit flea."

So many swear words erupt from their small, childish mouths. They would be in such trouble if the teacher were here. But she's not—_yet_— and aren't they already in deep shit? So the conversation continues.

"I can call you whatever the hell I want. Shizu. Chan." Izaya's eyes are narrowing, dangerously.

Shizuo attempts, one last time, to master himself. He tries to calm, tries to calm down a little. You'll only get yourself in to deeper shit than you already are. He thinks of Kasuka's disappointed face at home when he gets _another _suspension, tries to keep in control.

"Whatever."

"You know your problem?" Izaya whispers at Shizuo from across the room, because of course the teacher was smart enough to separate them but stupid enough to put them in the same room-school-city-country, and Izaya is beyond pissed now, thinking of his injuries, so pissed that he doesn't care that he's being as stupid as Shizuo.

"You're so easy to piss off, Shizu-chan, that no one can help doing it. I mean, you're so fucking stupid it almost makes me laugh, but then you're so pathetic I don't know whether I should laugh or cry for you. You've got no brains, and _everyone _in this fucking school is either scared of you or hates you."

"…" And the dam is this close to bursting, _this _close at the rawness of Izaya's eloquence.

"You've got no friends except for that little brother of yours, and even _he's _ashamed of you, because _guess what? _He's _normal_. And you are a freak. Haven't you seen it in his face? Or are you too scared to look, Shizu-chan? There is _no one _on your side. Sure, you can beat the crap out of everyone in this school, but you can't defeat the world. No one likes you, Heiwajima Shizuo. You will be a fucking loner the rest of your life, and you will die a piece of shit no one gives a damn about in the corner of a fucking construction site or something. Think about it, and tell me I'm not right."

When the teacher comes running back in at the sound of punches, Izaya is half-conscious on the floor, his arms pinned under Shizuo's superior leg-power, being pummeled again.

When asked why, a few hours later when Izaya is somewhere in a hospital and his blood is drying on Shizuo's hands in the principal's office, Shizuo says, "Because he pisses me off," and holds his hand out for the suspension notice.

But really, it's because Izaya's too smart for his own good. Shizuo hated that feeling, that Izaya became himself for a moment, telling himself the nightmares he does not want to think about, scraping the wounds of his life open and showing them to the sky. He hates how he could not tell Izaya that he was wrong, even while knocking a few of Izaya's loose teeth out. When it comes down to it, Izaya all-too-often understands Shizuo perfectly, and Shizuo hates that about him.


	2. D is for Dance

Warning: Heavy references to The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya series. Erika and Walker _are _otaku, after all. This one is for all of you who've had to put up with your friend's obsessions. I know I have. Contains slight ErikaXWalker, because those two are adorable together both as friends and as a couple. XD I can seem them falling in love later.

D is for Dance

The most memorable part of that long summer was definitely—for Kadota and Togusa as well as Erika and Walker—was the dance.

Kadota remembers the first day he opened the van door, totally oblivious of the sensation called "Hare Hare Yukai". Ah, those days before that accursedly long summer began. Those were the days, before he was even aware of the insanely happy and upbeat intro the song, before the eternally cheerful voice of Haruhi Suzumiya ever pierced his ear, before that melody was the first thing he heard in the morning and the last thing at night.

"What the—!" The music booms insultingly in his ears.

"Dotachin!" echo the ever-cheerful pair.

"What… what the hell _is_ that?" He points accusingly at the boom-box, as if there is clarification needed. He's too shocked, for once, to reprimand them for using _that _name.

"The Hare Hare Yukai!"

"Hare… Hare… Yukai?" What is that, some kind of Russian sushi or water-torture or something? Poor "Dotachin" is getting a headache already.

"I can't believe you don't know it!" Erika looks almost offended at his confusion.

"It's _the_ latest craze in anime! It's a sensation, a revelation!" Walker and Erika grin like cats at each other before turning their crazed eyes back on Kadota. Walker eagerly violates Kadota's personal space, leaning in and preparing to impart the knowledge of the holy cult of Suzumiya to the poor, ignorant nonbeliever.

"Never mind, never mind!" Kadota backs rapidly out of the van and slams the door, cutting off the music, suddenly aware of how small and enclosed it is.

Back inside the car, Erika and Walker look at each other while Haruhi's voice booms deafeningly out of the cheap speakers.

"What's wrong with him?"

"Dunno. Dotachin is always like that."

Two weeks later, after listening to the song nonstop, after watching the slowed-down version of the dance online a few hundred times, after modifying it to fit only two people, their plan is official. At an obscenely late time of day, they crouch in the shadows, their faces bathed in the ephemeral glow of the laptop screen.

"Ne, ne, Yumacchi?"

"What?"

"Is it official? Are we really doing this?"

Walker looks back at Erika in the darkness. Her eyes are glowing a little with excitement, and in that moment Walker can admit something to himself. It is something that he's been denying for quite a while now, but that nevertheless, without the strength of acknowledgement or encouragement, has grown steadily and irremovably in to his heart. He doesn't know that one lovely fall day in the future he will dare to share this secret with Erika, and she will respond with a delightful secret of her own, and they will start a long journey together. He doesn't know that Kadota and Togusa will laugh when they (inevitably) find out, because it seems so right, because they knew all along. Right now, this is all the truth he can handle.

"Of course!"

He puts his hand over hers in the darkness. Their fingers fit well in the warmth of the night. Together, they move the mouse, and click on the order button on the website. Walker smiles at Erika through the sparkling blackness of Ikebukuro, and she smiles back.

"Oi, Yumacchi, I need to ask you—_what the hell are you two wearing_?"

Togusa almost spits out his coffee at the sight of Erika in her newly-arrived sky-blue skirt, with yellow ribbons woven in her hair, and Walker in an equally ridiculous dark turquoise school uniform with a dark red tie. Not only that, but they're dancing. In a synchronized fashion. In a manner reminiscent of the glory days of the reign of para-para-dancing. Oh, the horrors.

"Oh, Togusa-san! Do you like it?" By now, they're fairly fluent in the movements of the Hare Hare Yukai, and both can talk and carry on dancing without too much of a problem. On the screen of the laptop, the figures of three tiny anime girls mirror the movements of Erika and Walker, who are intended to be Haruhi and Itsuki respectively.

"Those are… cosplay outfits?" The sarcasm drips from Togusa's voice. "And where the hell do you intend to wear them?"

Erika and Walker grin and spin in to the final formation of the dance, breathing hard. "On the last day of summer, we're going to the middle of Ikebukuro—you know that big square?—and we're going to do the Hare Hare Yukai!"

Togusa winces a little. "You guys are such otaku."

But of course, that's the wrong thing to say, because to Walker and Erika, this is a compliment.

As the end of summer approaches, the respective nerves of Togusa and Kadota slowly become wrecks. More and more commonly, words such as these are heard:

"If I hear that song one more time…"

"You two know that you're insane, right?"

"Why the hell do you spend so much time doing this?"

"No one cares!"

"It's just an anime!"

"It's just a dance!"

"UGH!"

The only response is a pair of infuriating grins and ever-loudening music that rises up and drowns their protests in upbeat notes. The wills of Erika and Walker are truly formidable when gathered together, and Togusa and Kadota often find themselves sitting in the van by themselves while the otaku practice away, rolling their eyes and shaking their heads while Togusa drives at near-illegal speeds.

Soon, the big day arrives.

"You two okay?" Kadota eyes them suspiciously. Walker's literally bouncing up and down in the back of the van—their chosen transport to the auspicious location of their performance, of course— while Erika is pale as death and sits with her fists tightly clenched on top of her knees. Waxy white wire connects the earbuds, one in Walker's ear and one in Erika's, to the music player that sits quietly on Erika's lap, as they apparently mentally review their routine one last time.

Togusa rolls his eyes. "Leave them alone."

But Kadota can't. He looks at them some more, neck craned at an uncomfortable angle.

"Don't tell me… are you guys nervous or something?"

The silence is deafening while Togusa and Kadota stare first at their passengers, and then at each other. They burst out laughing.

"You've got to be fucking kidding me!"

"Really, guys, really?"

"My _God_, are they seriously nervous about _this_?"

They manage to stop mocking the pair in the back a few minutes later, when they don't respond, and change tact from making fun to half-serious comforting.

"Come on, you two. Get it together."

"You've practiced all summer, for God's sake."

Erika swallows hard; the yellow ribbons in her hair making her look even more childish than she already appears. "But if we mess up in front of so many people… that would be… be like…" Her explanation falters. "It'd be like our reputations as true otaku are damaged or something!" Erika's voice suggests it's a matter of no small importance. Walker glares at the two in the front seats a little when they roll their eyes, puts his arm around Erika hesitantly. She leans into his touch, and her fists loosen a little.

Togusa and Kadota look at each other, eyes widened half a centimeter. More has changed this summer than the state of their collective mental healths, apparently.

The van shudders to a stop. The door rolls open, bright morning light piercing the gloomy semi-darkness of the vehicle's interior. The plaza unfolds around them, crowded even this early on a warm Sunday afternoon. The sky is a brilliant cloudless blue, mirroring the blue of Erika's skirt, full of possibilities.

"Here we are."

They don't move, for a moment, sitting still in the shade. Then, they turn to each other, simultaneously, souls in sync to the beat of joyous music only they can hear. They read each other's eyes, and all doubt is erased in that instant.

"Let's go."

In the end, what is there to say about the actual day? It went by so fast for Erika, flew by for Walker. They danced the Hare Hare Yukai all morning and across the hot hours of the noon, over and over. They certainly attracted large crowds. Fellow otaku joined in. People laughed and pointed and took pictures, immortalizing the pair in a thousand cell-phone flashes. They chatted with other fans, posed together for pictures. They were scowled upon by some business people and smiled upon by others. An old lady shamed them all, explaining that her ten-year-old granddaughter loves the Suzumiya series and taught her the dance. They bought lunch, then dinner.

At some point, they sat sweating on the uncomfortably hot floor. When they next looked, two water bottles somehow seemed to have appeared next to their speakers. Erika and Walker looked at each other, thought of stern Kadota and Togusa, and laughed to know their friends are behind them, listened to the van rumble ever-so-discreetly away.

After noon passes, their dance disintegrates in to a mix of random hip-shaking to various upbeat anime themes in Erika's mp3 player and concentrated Caramelldansen marathons of up to ten minutes at a time. People come and go, come and go, while Walker whirls Erika around in an improvised waltz and Erika teaches Walker the moves to the Lucky Star dance. They attempt a two-person version of Gee, then try to modify the dance to fit twenty-five when people jump in. They try to decipher the choreography of Single Ladies, without much luck. Laughter is abundant. Joy washes over their skin like sweat. Spontaneity is the rule of the moment.

When the night is advanced, the van rumbles back in to the plaza. It stops next to the exhausted duo. Kadota and Togusa exit. Walker and Erika look up at them, too weak to get up, too happy to want to move. The silence connecting them is beautiful and comfortable.

"So," says Togusa.

"So," says Walker, and to Togusa it seems that the couple are glowing like angels in the night with the light created by their own joy.

Kadota kills the mood abruptly. "Can we please, please, _please_, never hear that fucking song again?"

Laughter at his desperation shatters the silence like the rattle of summer rain on a parched land. There's nothing better than the feeling of friendship on your skin and love in the air on a hot summer night.


	3. X is for X Rays

Author's Note, part 1: Why does Shizuo fight?

Author's Note, part 1b: Sorry for the concussion, Shizuo. I figured you wouldn't get "deep" about your life if you weren't sporting one.

**X is for X-Ray(s)**

"Shi-_zuo_!"

The person known by the aforementioned name grinds his teeth loudly. He is _not_ in the mood to deal with Simon right now. When is he ever, really? When is _anyone ever _in the mood to deal with Simon?

"Come have some sushi, Shizuo! Friends should eat sushi! It's cheap, and it's fresh!"

Another word. Just one more word out of your mouth and I'll give you a fucking _reason _to call me _friend_.

"Why is Shizuo ignoring me?"

"FUCKING HELL!"

Out comes the caution sign, screaming as it is torn from the ground. Through bloody mist, a distant part of Shizuo's mind notes the irony.

"Stop. FUCKING. Talking to me. _Do you FUCKING understand me_?"

"Uh oh. Fighting is bad, Shizuo."

"FUCK! FUCK YOU, FUCK THIS"—

His vocabulary is reduced word by word as his humanity is quickly stripped away by the anger. Shizuo is becoming a beast again, becoming a God. But with the coming of the strength is the going of the intelligence, and Shizuo fails to remember who he's fighting against.

Simon is a pacifist. That is true. But he's also a human. He'll defend himself when some six feet plus of pure rage comes barreling at him with bared teeth and clenched fists and a signpost for good measure. It's his right to, really. Anyone would, standing in Simon's shoes. But while "anyone" would get flattened, Simon…

To his credit, Simon doesn't kill Shizuo. Shizuo deserves it, that's for sure, but Simon holds back, because he remembers how angry he was in his youth, in the harsh air of Russia. So he forgives Shizuo, even while breaking Shizuo's arm. That should be enough to stop him; it would be enough to stop anyone else. But Shizuo just roars in pain and goes berserk, goes feral, goes out-of-his-mind _crazy_, and Simon is confronted with absolutely irrational madness, the living mess that is Heiwajima Shizuo. So Simon keeps going, and keeps forgiving Shizuo in his mind while cracking his ribs, bloodying his forehead and reducing him to a mess, the kind Shizuo's not used to being in because there are truly few in this city who can match him in a street fight.

Afterwards.

Shizuo is almost unconscious, and the pain just keeps coming. It's bad this time, he thinks. Worse than it usually is. After all, he's the one lying on the ground, isn't he? Is he on the ground? He can't really feel it. Is all that blood really his? Where did Simon go? Why are there people taking pictures? Fuck them. Fuck them _all_. He'd get up and kill them, but something tells him that would be a very bad idea. His head hurts. A lot. Everything is kind of fuzzy and a little strangely colored, and he's pretty sure Shinra told him that means something… something bad or something. It started with a 'c'. Shinra told him not to get one. Get what? What was it? What is happening, again? Can we slow down and start over, please? Replay, replay, replay. That conversation. The fight. This day. My fucking existence.

And so on, and so forth. Shizuo groans a little. Fuck my life, he thinks. Fuck it all. Let's go to Hell together. Let's crash and burn and die. The pain continues to smash into him, coming down in shitloads, and his thoughts drift off again. His eyes close and open and shut again, his eyelashes like butterflies kissing the blood on his damaged face.

He opens his eyes wide.

"Hello, Shizuo."

"Shinra…"

The fucking doctor is leaning over him. He's not on the street, somehow. They are in a white room. Shinra's operating room. It is more familiar to Shizuo than his own house. The x-rays line the walls like portraits of his humanity. They mock him. Quiet clicks sound as Shinra puts his operating instruments down on a table.

"Why am I always doing this for you?" Shinra wants an answer. He gets—

"Concussion," says Shizuo.

"What?" Shinra turns around.

"That's what it was. A concussion."

"You have one," affirms Shinra carefully, unsure of what Shizuo is talking about. "Among other injuries." Brokenness. Of many types.

Silence.

"Shizuo?"

More silence.

"Why do you do this to yourself?"

No answer. Shinra turns to look. Shizuo is unconscious again. He sighs, and gets back to work patching up his wreck of a friend.

When Shizuo dreams, it is of violence.

He is eight. Kasuka just ate his pudding. The refrigerator is picked up, and then he's underneath it in a way different than he intended. _I don't need family_, thinks Shizuo as the refrigerator crushes him.

He is eleven. The kids at school just called him a freak. The desk goes flying through the air, and he goes flying in the other direction. _I don't need acceptance_, thinks Shizuo as he hits the floor.

He is fourteen. The girl he was dating was cheating on him, after all. The statue hits the air, and he goes flying to the floor. _I don't need love_, thinks Shizuo as he goes down.

He is sixteen. Izaya's face is in his own, fucking _again_, and that's all the reason he needs. The vending machine goes flying through the air. _I don't need pity_, thinks Shizuo as he watches Izaya stagger.

He is twenty. The reporter goes flying through the air and Shizuo is panting, smiling, angry and happy and everything else. _I don't need questions_, he snarls, and returns to Tom's side while Tom shakes him by the shoulders, tells him to look at me, look at me. Calm the fuck down, Shizuo.

He is in the room again, and again, and again. All different rooms, but all the same. A single, glowing x-ray of his broken arm-bone sits on the wall. It stares him in the face. He stares back at it, fascinated by the blue and white and black regions of it, representing what is broken inside him. In his twisted dreams, the photos multiply and multiply—ankles, legs, hip, wrist, shoulder, collarbone, fingers, ribs— until they form strange patterns. Pictures of frailty. Patterns that reveal to him nothing—useless pieces of _shit—_ and ask him, instead, _what is wrong with you? _Why are you always breaking yourself? What is this anger? Are you human?

Who, thinks Shizuo. Gives. A _fuck_? It's my damn body. I'll do with it what I like. If it breaks, I'm the one to break it.

"Unless Simon does it for you. You idiot."

He hadn't realized he said the last part out loud. He must be awake again.

"You're the one who attacked him. It's really your fault, Shizuo. But you don't care, of course."

Shizuo doesn't say anything. The x-rays are glowing in his face, asking questions again.

Author's Note, part 2: The world may never know. :D Shizuo's great, isn't he?


	4. F is for Finding

**F is for Finding**

At the end of yet another satisfying day, she sits on a quiet bench in the corner of the courtyard. The warm light of the setting sun fills this small valley surrounded by looming mountains—the headquarters of various mega-corporations, banks, apartment buildings filled with humanity.

In the settling hush of dusk, she allows herself to think of her parents in America. She smiles while remembering the sweet breath of the little brother, the happy family she left behind two years ago. They should be rising to the start of a new day soon. What do they dream of? Do they think of her? She blesses them in her night as their day arrives, her smile traveling across the globe to land in a small, ordinary house in Texas.

This is her favorite time of day, needless to say. She is happy on that bench. She doesn't mind the many strange looks she gets because of her cropped blonde hair, her light sapphire eyes, her conspicuous neon-pink tights and decidedly Western jean jacket. When she came to Japan two years ago, she resigned herself to the fact that she would always be somewhat of an outsider here.

She came seeking the excitement of a foreign country, the smell of a journey blessing her freckled nose, the Japan that she loved through anime and manga that she stayed up late at night reading when she was ten forever in her mind. Now she can laugh at her own nervous determination, her broken Japanese back then—less so, now, — but she still admires the spirit of adventure that drove her here. However, how innocent, how naive she was back then! But how daring, how incredible of this sheltered girl to break free from safety! She walked around the streets of Ikebukuro with one pale hand on her guidebook and the other on the cross next to her heart, strung there by gold links of love that her mother gave her to protect her when she told them she was leaving. Her heart was so full of hopes and fears and dreams.

And those two years were hard, at first. Despite her outgoing, cheerful personality, those shaded looks and quick, unfriendly glances ground her down, at first. The whispers cut her ears. Sometimes, in the dead of night, she cried a little in frustration at the effort it took her to do something as simple as navigate a subway station to her small, dirty apartment. She longed for her mother and father, her brother, her friends from college that she left. She longed for real Western food, for crowds that spoke her language, people that fenced her in with love, not out with strangeness. It was so hard not to give in, not to surrender this adventure and return to safety, to familiarity. Surrounded by people in a city that seemed uncaring sometimes, she felt lost.

But she kept fighting, kept fighting. She wiped her tears away and smiled because she was living her dream. She remembered the magic of this strange land that drew her on that plane, full of the crossings between thousand-year-old tradition and the latest technology. And now she feels protected by the crowd, not threatened by it. If they give her strange looks because of the sign she carries and the notebook around her neck and her strong accent, so be it. Let them stare; she'll stare back, and then smile and wave, and beckon them over if they look as lost as she did years ago. And truthfully, there is nothing she would rather do than this—to offer people this paper, to let them write around her neck, near her heart, and to let them privilege her with hearing their wishes.

Ah, this job of hers. She prefers to think of them not as people who have lost something, but people who are seeking. That's why she always says "Are you looking for something?" instead of "Have you lost something?"No, she doesn't even like to think of them as seeking. She sees them as people who are already finding something, unconsciously on the road to the thing that they desire, something that will bring them joy and contentment when they find it. She's a finder too, and this process, this writing down of things, is what brings _her _joy and contentment.

She loves her standard introductory call of, "Excuse me!" She loves how when she gives them this notebook, their eyes light up in a universal way, and their smiles are warm and genuine. She loves smiling back at them, the glow of her white teeth loud and brassy in the air. She loves how her broken Japanese doesn't matter, then. And the _best _part is when someone comes to her, and says, "I have lost something," and she can say back confidently, "Someone has found it," and shows them the sign.

The girl finds the boy she's seeking at the café, and when they dance together in the darkness she laughs from far away. The mysterious rider writes the word "head" on the paper, and her shoulders finally untense a little, and she is glad for it. When the man who wrote "A job!" on the paper two weeks ago comes by again, and he's in a business suit and a slightly lopsided tie instead of the street clothes he was in last time, she laughs, her blonde hair curling in the sun like a messy halo.

Sometimes, they even remember her the way she always remembers them, and they share a few words, or just a laugh or a wave from far away. Her memory is sharp, her eyes and ears open to the beauty of this world, and these are some of the times she feels most alive.

And her own life? When she's not watching others, what is it she seeks? Why is she here, not at home where she belongs?

On cue, a familiar stride breaks her from her reverie. She turns at the sound of his footsteps. His smile is beautiful. He's on time, as always. Such a punctual, neat man. Such the opposite to her. So quiet, except when he's laughing with her.

"What did you help find today?" And she loves how he knows just what to ask first.

She shows him her notebook as he sits with her in the sunset, reads the words out loud so he can hear her voice. She pretends like he can't read them himself—of course, it's really for _her_ happiness, and he lets her because that makes _him _happy. Her tongue slips around the syllables, but she doesn't care. Let the mistakes come.

"I found something too," he says when she's finally done. His black eyes turn into half-crescent curves as he smile at her.

"What, you beautiful Japanese man?" She laughs.

"I found a smile that makes me smile. The most beautiful woman on Earth."

She fumbles for a moment with the beauty of his words, trying to match them with her small grasp of this language. What comes out is:

"I love you."

And as they talk, he laughs at her "fail-Japanese!" and she laughs at his "words that are cheesy!". And as they laugh and laugh together, holding hands, she knows this is why she is not in America, in the dry heat of her native Texas, not in an American college, not with her family.

Because this kind of finding could only happen in Ikebukuro.


	5. Z is for Zounds

Author's Note: Boo for Shakespeare, who cost me my English grade! :D Just kidding, Shakespeare is great. Written while listening to "Hey Juliet" by LMNT, "Hey Soul Sister" by Train, and "Check Yes Juliet" by We The Kings on loop.

**Z is for Zounds!**

"Zounds?"

They are sitting on the roof, eating lunch, and Kida is being weird again. Mikado isn't certain if that's normal or not. It seems Kida's always like that.

"Indeed, Mikado. Zounds is the word which hath just escaped my lips."

"Hath… escaped… lips…?"

Kida sighs at the pained expression on his best friend's face. Mikado's being skeptical again. Kida's pretty sure that's normal. Mikado's always being skeptical, especially around Anri. It's cute, the way he acts around her.

"My _dear_ Mikado. The startled emotions which have just appeared on your visage are most unbecoming."

"Eh?"

"Shakespeare."

"What?" Mikado turns his head too fast and gets a crick in his neck. He stares at Anri, rubbing his neck. Anri was being quiet, as usual. Where'd that come from?

"Kida. He's trying to speak like Shakespeare." She turns her face back to the book in her lap.

Kida looks pleased, and changes tact accordingly.

"What is a name? That person whom we call Anri by any other name would be as…"

"Sweet?" Mikado jumps in. "Uh—er—I mean—that's the ending to the quote—not what I—ummm…." Mikado blushes a little because he_ does _think it's true, even if Kida's just being silly. Why does this happen whenever he's around Anri?

"Erotically cute, of course!" Kida slips out of his new obsession long enough to scold Mikado, whacking him lightly in the head with his dog-eared copy of _Romeo and Juliet_. "How could you be so unimaginative, Mikado? I denounce your unoriginality!"

"Ero-… erotically cute?" There's that word again, the one that sounds so natural from his friend's lips, but he can never bring himself to say.

Kida doesn't know whether to laugh or cry at Mikado's face. The poor guy's blushing to the roots of his hair, squirming a little, glancing at Anri for cues. Anri ignores them, as always.

"Look at Juliet, Mikado." He grabs Mikado's chin, turns it forcefully in "Juliet's" direction. "And look upon thy master."

He launches in before Mikado can say anything to the contrary.

"But soft, what light from yonder corner breaks?" His voice is loud and dramatic and echoes horribly across the rooftop. "It is the-land-of-that-which-is-erotically-cute, and Anri is the queen. Arise, fair queen, and kill all those hordes upon _hordes _of Raira Academy girls, who are already pale and sick with envy that thou, their queen, art far more fair than they. She is my lady"—

People are looking at them. There's a couple of girls who are laughing and pointing. Mikado wants to sink into the ground and die.

—"She speaks, yet she says nothing!" Kida is quite undaunted, finishing his speech with a flourish of enthusiasm and a smile the shape of a slice of watermelon. Because Anri _doesn't_ say anything at these rather inaccurately quoted lines, just give Kida a look like he's an alien and keep studying for her math test after lunch. Fine. If she won't look at him, then—more _desperate_ measures are called for.

"My lips"—

Mikado starts at the mention of lips. Kida wants to laughs, but smothers the sound in his chest and keeps going, despite the glares that Mikado is shooting him. If Mikado's not going to fight for her, he's just going to have to step aside.

— "two blushing pilgrims, ready stand…to kiss"—

"_Kiss_?" Mikado can't remain silent anymore. "You can't say"—

—"_Dear_ saint," says Kida, mowing over Mikado's spluttering protestations relentlessly, "let lips do what hands do. They pray: grant-thou-lest-faithturn_todespair_!" Kida's words tumble like puppies in the sun as he sees Mikado's emotions heighten in tension. He kneels smoothly at Anri's feet, grabs her hand for a kiss. He wills Mikado to jump in and stop him. Now, now, _now—_

"Don't"—

Mikado pulls Kida away in the nick of time.

Kida turns to Mikado and raises his eyebrow. "Saucy _boy_! I didn't know _you _were interested!"

"Eh? No—No, I'm notinterested!"

"What, my dear Sir Disdain! Are you yet living?"

Mikado switches tact, blushing hard. "Can you at least leave Sonohara-san out of this?" Sometimes, when he sees Kida acting like he always does, but around Anri, he feels the passionate and immediate desire to punch Kida in the face. Hard. Luckily, it always seems to pass.

Kida draws Mikado close.

"Huh?"

Smiling, he whispers in Mikado's ear—

"_Beware_, my lord, of _jealousy_. It is the green-eyed monster, which doth mock  
the meat it feeds on."

"I'm _not"—_

"Not what?"

"I'm not even looking at her! You're the one who's all"—

"Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind."

"_Kida"—_

"She is such stuff as dreams are made of_, _Mikado."

Mikado pushes Kida off him awkardly. He can't believe the heights—or perhaps depths would be more accurate—that Kida is willing to go to, sometimes.

"Stop! Misquoting Shakespeare, or whatever, man. Just stop."

"Do you feel threatened?"

"It's not that!"

Anri tilts her head at the two arguing boys. Kida is nice, she supposes. He's full of energy and wild gestures, like the rays of the sun, always giving her compliments, always going through phases. Mikado, though. He's quieter, more thoughtful. There is more depth and sincerity in his actions than Kida, who is all jokes and pick-up lines and action. Both boys are her friends, now. Friends. What does that even mean? Strange that she should have them. Strange that on this rooftop, on this day, people should be arguing over _her_. An year ago this would have been unthinkable. Now—

"Your puny command of our language is simply bested by the beauty of my words. Admit it, young hopeless man, and wallow in depair!"

"Wallow in despair? That's not even, like, Shakespearean. You're just making stuff up now."

"So what if I am? What are you going to do about it?"

"I- I'm going to- It's not like it's my problem—A-Anri? Where are you going?" The lady in question has serenely risen and packed up her things.

"Bell. It rang while you two were arguing."

Kida watches Mikado watch her from the corners of his golden eyes, slyly and gently. As she strides calmly away, Mikado moans and puts his hands on his knees. He looks so dejected and embarrassed that Kida wants to laugh. This love triangle is just too much. Sometimes Kida just has to lean back and admire the beauty of it all. Him, his best friend, and Anri Sonohara, the blue sky, the warm air; it is all too perfect. The danger of that yellow color, his past, has faded away almost completely in moments like these, bleached colorless by the sun.

As they head back in, all Mikado is thinking about is when their unit on Shakespeare is going to get done. He hopes it's soon.


	6. R is for Russia

**Author's Note: **I _DO NOT_ know how old Simon is. Probably older than 25 or so, but younger than 40. He's kinda ageless, know what I mean? And I don't know _anything _about Russia. On another note (HAH!), this chapter of the fic was fueled entirely by E.S. Posthumus music. Thank God (again) for Youtube playlists, or else no writing would _ever _get done.

**R is for Russia**

You'll never get a straight answer out of Simon if you ask him where he grew up, or what his childhood was like, or for that matter anything at all about his past. Try it sometime. All he'll do is smile at you, infuriatingly, and ask you if you want to try their sushi. Keep trying, and he'll keep ignoring you. If anything, Simon is a man built of infinite patience and even more infinite mystery. After all, why do you think a young black Russian man would suddenly move all the way to Japan? It wasn't really escape from anything. It was more complicated than that.

Let me tell you a secret, a secret about his youth. But don't tell him I told you, whatever you do. He just might break that pacifist vow of his, all that old anger bottled up inside welling up again.

The land where he was born is a harsh, perpetually cold world in the far-north of one of Russia's more remote regions. The black buildings of his town huddle close together low to the ground, their skins washed in their own smoke, like beasts ducking the scraping winds. Ice and snow rule the sky most of the year, and there are only one or two precious months when the sun breaks through the iron-clad clouds to dip the land in weak, watery light the color of broken eggshells. Only the toughest and most pernicious seeds managing to find life in the frozen soil there, and so even the flowers in that land seem edged in sharp, warning steel. The language, too, is somewhat clipped and short—there was no room for elegance, or anything but power, in that world. If Simon could describe that place, he would say it was colorless—not a bright white or an absolute black, just washed-out, worn-out shades of coal and steel and paper. But it was not a world without its own peculiar brand of arctic beauty, in hindsight, if one had the eyes to see it.

He remembers making a snowman out of ice that made his hands bleed. His mother called him a fool while binding his fingers with dirty bandages. When he went back out to see it, it had been trampled by a passing group of boys. He remembers crying, for some reason, the tears freezing on his cheeks before they could crawl all the way down, because he hated those children and because he was helpless, stuck forever in this poor, hostile world.

Time changed him quickly into an angry, aggressive, wild rooster of a boy. Soon he was the fiercest fighter in the whole country-side, always ready to pick an argument, taking offense at the slightest feathers of words. His reputation preceded him, in the turn of shoulders, the glances tucked away in to corners like dirty ashes swept from the hearth, quickly, always quickly. Even the snowflakes seemed to shy away from him.

He fell in to the wrong crowd. Or perhaps they were the ones who came to him, like insects drawn to the heat of a roaring fire, blatantly disrespecting the coldness of the air, the only light for kilometers around. They respected—_feared_, he now knows—him for his strength, and his aggression, and his anger. And he kept them—needed them—because they fanned his arrogance, feeding the fire of selfishness, of stupidity, with the kindling of their admiration.

Those angry young men—what has become of them, now? Are they still trapped in that hostile country, revolutionaries without a cause, avengers without pasts to avenge? Or have they managed to slip through the bars of the cage, like him? He hopes nothing but the best for them.

He knows now that he used his strength for all the wrong reasons: for hate, for selfishness, for foolish vengeances. That violence was mindless hedonism, the masturbation of the minds of young Russian men.

They fought, recklessly, helplessly, wherever they went, smearing blood on bar walls and old roads and the razor-edged flowers, in those precious days of summer. They were so alone, trapped in their edge-of-nowhere town, beaten by the sky and the land, with no past and no future. And so they wrapped themselves in the bloody warmth of the present—cold comfort, but better than still-colder thoughts. Their victims were chosen indiscriminately, their enemies made through mere half-glances or a misspoken syllable. And Simon stood at the head of it, leading the parade of exploding passion, of suppression, his fists clearing a path to nowhere for them all.

It bred a vicious circle of hate, but in the beginning the consequences did not touch him. They broke bones and teeth and hearts, but not yet lives, and so they continued their useless ways.

But one day.

Something did change, for once. Soldiers had come to this edge-of-nowhere town, for some high-end political reasons, to quell unrest, or some such foolishness. Everyone knew there was no unrest in their town, at least not enough to unsettle even the weakened government of war-fractured Russia. The hackles of these young men, however, were immediately raised. This scrap of pathetic town was more precious than nonexistent jewels or treasures to these boys; it was everything, it was all they had.

And, critically, this invasion of other male specimens made them feel inferior.

Oh, they called the soldiers bastards and assholes and made up one thousand and more reasons why they deserved "to get what was coming to them," but Simon knows it was because the soldiers looked infinitely cleaner and had intelligent eyes and spoke with the accent of authority, and the big cities. They felt ashamed, and lesser, and humiliated by these men so much better than themselves.

If only he could tell himself, at that crucial moment, on the moment of breaking! It is not their clothes or their military precision that make them better than you. It is your own anger, and your hate, and your attitude towards them, that made you lower-grade, that made you inferior. Better yourselves, rather than trying to drag them to your level.

But of course, they didn't.

It started off as a few pushes in a bar late at night. These young men, these foreigners from their own country, these invaders by order—they were sore-tried, as well, to keep their patience. They were stuck in a hostile land, surrounded by poor, strange children and filthy people, far from home and the city and warmth and family. And so, they fought back, perhaps sooner than they should have.

But it was no one's fault but Simon's own, in the end, he admits. Young, and foolish, and so unseeing, so stupid. That pushes turned into full-scale fights, into a gang war of sorts, fought in dark alleys and snow-blinded, sunless days. Blood and bodies littered the street, but unlike before, the bodies didn't get up, didn't live to fight another day. Because they had forgotten the all-important thing.

The soldiers had guns as well as fists.

Kneeling in the transient light of the moon, howling at the uncaring snow, cradling the body of yet another one of his friends on his knees—alone, his fighting companions scattered by the bullets and the death—he wonders, why is it that everything he thought unbreakable is suddenly so fragile? It almost seems my hands, these bloody hands, could crush everything here.

Haven't they? The snow asks questions. This is your fault.

His wide eyes tremble at the sight of the blood, everywhere, everywhere, filling the street with its irony tang. The white from the sky cannot erase it, never, from his mind.

I- I didn't mean to—

You didn't mean to. But?

It's not my fault! It can't be. Not this. Blame the soldiers, blame the rest—they followed me, they were the ones who started—

No.

Think about it. Really think about it.

Isn't all this death just the consequence of your selfishness, of your constant need for attention? There were so many paths, so many you could have taken. So many. And this is only one of them.

"No," he says, and this time it is aloud. "No." His voice is a hoarse whisper snatched away by the wind.

From his lap, the corpse grins at him, and says, yes.

Simon screams and drops the body, his hands trembling, and runs.

He was only eighteen. A man, but a young one. Forgive him for running from his own mistakes, for not taking the blame, for leaving the brunt of the stained situation on the village. Forgive him for fleeing across the land, haunted all the way East, across the sea, to Japan, to Ikebukuro, far enough so he feels—wishes—hopes—that the ghosts have been lost somewhere along the way. It is so easy to make fun of death, but when you are in that moonlight, and those hands are yours, you may not find yourself so strong.

This was some years ago.

And is he still seeking penance now?

He knows there is no amount that will bring back the lives he wasted. You wonder why he's a pacifist? How can he not be? It is the only way to live, for him, with the ghosts of those angry boys weighing his shoulders down.

And what does he think of his life today?

He'll tell you—not really, but I know that he thinks this—that his favorite thing is watching the children of this city. And yes, they are all children to him, from Mikado to Shizuo, all foolish and angry and passionate, and yet so much better than he was. They have honor and truth and they seem so much wiser than he was at their age. They live their lives beautifully. Yes, there is violence and hate at work here, but unlike there, he feels that _this _land has hope in it, too, and color, and joy, and love, and feels like an outsider. The flowers aren't all lacy steel—some have delicate flowers of purple or yellow, and stops to look at them in the spring. He watches a strange life whirl by, and only steps in to stop the occasional fight, because he still cannot bear to see that, still. He has learned to control his anger, to some extent, and to use his strength to protect the weaker, and to stop the strong from destroying themselves the way he did. And this city is alive. It is so magical, so different from Russia, that he sometimes has to remember where it is that he came from, and what the first two decades of his life were like. And with it, what he did.

He will not allow himself to take the easy path, to try and forget the sin. Because then he knows his life would become hollow and dull and a mockery of joy, the skeletons grinning in his sleep. He would rather face them in the day than the night.

Someday, when he's a braver man, he'll go back to that village and wash in that smoky moonlight, again, and allow himself to cry. But until then, he'll live in the land of a rising sun, and when the sun sets, he'll look across the ocean and close his eyes, let the red fill his eyelids like a cup, and let that red be enough for him. And wait for the next day, when maybe he'll forgive himself.

**Author's Note: **I wanted to thank the people who have reviewed/faved/alert-ed this story so far, which I have stupidly neglected to do up till now. Special thanks to all of you—your encouragement fuels this fic!

**Kacey, Raisonne, aKiy0z, Catastrophic Monsoon, Uphill Both Ways, Red Spider Lily, proud shipper, Chi, Meepy, Orcrist's Mate, ChocoBits Daioh, cicadaspirit, EmXchan, Iheartbluepandas, leostarx, second soul of a cat, and centurylm**


	7. S is for Smoke

**S is for Smoke**

"How much do you smoke a day, anyways?"

"Hm? I don't know. I don't keep track."

"A lot," Celty estimates for him.

"Yes. A lot. Why?"

She doesn't answer directly. Instead, the next message to show up on the faintly glowing screen is—

"You should stop that."

Shizuo looks at this mysterious transporter, this half-woman and half-legend, the one who calls him friend, and whom he dares to call the same. He takes a deep drag from his cigarette, blows smoke into the air. He likes this feeling of quiet that always comes with Celty's presence.

"Stop? _This_? Why, does it annoy you or something?" He takes the thing out from between his lips for a moment, raises an eyebrow.

The keys send out rapid clicking sounds in the harsh noon light. "You'll die from it. Or at least ruin yourself."

His face contorts. He doesn't like this side of her, this warning, this preaching, this uncomfortable accuracy.

"I guess I might." More smoke drifts through the air. Celty does not cough. Of course.

Her stillness is bothering him, so he's the first to kill the silence.

"So what? There's a million things anyone could die of. I could get run over by a truck or something. I could get food poisoning and die. A fucking meteorite could hit us right now, and then where would you and I be?" He rolls his eyes pointedly at the sky, daring a flaming piece of rock to hurtle down and kill them.

He can practically hear her snort of impatience. "You _know_ what I mean. A truck, poison, a meteorite—those are uncertain, while thatis certain." She points the screen at the cigarette, remembering stories about young lives cut tragically short by cancer on television, feeling a premature ache in her heart.

Shizuo considers his answer for a moment. "Even if it gets me killed, I'll do it anyways."

"Why? If it'll get you killed, why won't you stop?" It's almost a plea.

"I won't. It's me, you know? It's like"—he waves his hand around vaguely through the cloudy air—"if I stop, then I'm not me. Or something like that."

She shakes her whole self, a full-body denial.

"I don't get you sometimes, Shizuo."

He stares at her. "Don't get me…"

Then a smile curves his lips. He thinks he's got the answer.

"Is there something up between you and Shinra or something?"

"Eh? N-… no, why?"

Shizuo smiles at the surprise evident in her body language.

"No. It's just. You're not usually like this. So I thought you two had an argument. You just seem a little depressed, is all."

"No. We didn't argue. I was just wondering."

Silence.

"Is it wrong for me just to ask something like this?"

Shizuo looks at her strangely again. "So if I died, it would really bother you that much? That's weird."

Her fingers explode on the keys, then shove the message an inch from Shizuo's nose, so he has to back up to read the words. "How is it weird? You do realize you only have one life, right? I think it's weird that _you're _so casual about it." She crosses her arms against herself, because the air seems a little colder.

"I wouldn't really say it's 'casual'." Shizuo's smoking again, the smoke billowing like thoughtful clouds from between his lips. "Well, I_ guess_ you could say I was being casual about it. I dunno. I don't think about it much myself—dying, I mean. I guess, when it happens, however it happens, it happens. There's not really anything I can do about it. Except for live as much as I can, and that's got smoking in it, the living, for me at least."

They look at each other, human and other, contemplating.

How can Celty explain to this man how she feels? She has all the time on earth, will be alive long after this man—bigger than life, but a mortal at the end of the day— is gone. He knows it, she knows it. But. He is possessed of a confidence, a faith of types in the unknowability of his own fate, which shines out from beneath those blue-tinted glasses. It's a confidence she—the urban legend, the nightmare of Ikebukuro, the Masked Rider, for God's sake— can only peer at through the mist of her own immortality. And suddenly a distant death seems only to obscure from her how to live.

"Hey."

Celty looks up. She begins to type the word "Sorry" out for her inattention, but he stills her fingers with his.

"You're smoking a little too."

"Eh?"

Again, that smile. "Your neck. So tell me. Are you going to die in front of me, transporter?"

She watches that strange black smoke, her only lifeblood, swirl out densely from underneath the helmet like an ephemeral scarf. Shizuo feels his hand shake a little in hers in the only laughter she has. For a moment, he almost feels sorry for this woman, trapped in a strange land—her only home. But then he remembers pity does no one any good and releases her fingers. He knows she will be fine. She is strong, after all, maybe more so than he would be in her place.

"I suppose I am. Smoking, a little. Just like you, except you do it on purpose and I don't have a choice."

He snorts at her. His teeth are showing again in that dangerous smile of his.

"You think I have a choice?"

"I think you still do. It's your life."

"It is."

They regard each other again.

"But don't forget what I said. Don't you dare talk to _me_ about smoking. Hypocrite."

They continue standing together, bathing in the noontime sun. Black smoke and grey smoke billow together, and flies in to the faded blue of the sky. The moment of worry passes, and they are friends again. Of course.

Celty wonders what exactly they talked about, later. Shizuo says it was "about smoking, of course!" He discards the depth of it offhandedly, even though she thinks it went a little beyond that.


	8. Q is for Quiet

**Q is for Quiet**

Kadota is, by nature, a man of few words. He is calm and collected. His emotions are buried deep within his chest at all times. When you ask him what his favorite thing is, he'll invariably reply that it is "quiet."

Considering that fact, his choice of friends is rather odd.

Erika and Walker are Erika and Walker. Two crazed otaku who always have maniacal gleams in their eyes and are always, constantly, incessantly chattering about some manga or anime or video game or drama CD or something. They ramble on to each other and Togusa and even him as a last resort, and if he ignores them they just talk to the air. Togusa's a little better, except when it comes to cars or that silly girl idol of his. He turns in to a maniac, too, when it comes to either subject. Then, it's practically just as bad as with the otaku duo—his eyes either shine with tears of admiration and "love", or they transform in to the triangular eyes of a demon set loose from Hell.

"Dotachin?"

Not to mention the idiotic nickname.

He turns towards Erika. They've just come back from some anime convention or something, all hyped up and crazy and sweaty from running around all day. Walker's busy peeling off his costume in his bathroom.

"What?" he asks, annoyed and sleepy. It's around one in the morning, and God knows they don't have a reason for camping out at _his _place for the night.

"Dotachin is being grumpy again!" yells Walker from the bathroom. Kadota winces at the way his voice cuts through the air, scratching it with noise.

"You're so quiet and mysterious and cool all the time, Dotachin. Like the main character of an anime, who arrives in a sleepy town and stirs things up at night—maybe you're a vigilante vampire killer with guns hidden underneath that coat!" Erika exclaims, excitedly.

"… Vampire killer?" He turns away, rubbing his eyes. "My life's not as exciting as you want it to be. Go to sleep."

"But I'm not sleepy." She sounds as pouty as a child.

Walker's muffled voice issues from behind the bathroom door. "Tell us, tell us! The amazing story of the mysterious Dotachin!"

"There's nothing mysterious about it." Kadota passes his hands over his eyes wearily. "What are you guys, kids? You want a bedtime story or something?"

"But you know a lot about us, and we barely know anything about you. That's not fair at all."

"True, true, Yumasaki! There's much to be told! There's a wonderful story of an exciting and romantic life that we've yet to hear!"

She shifts expectantly to him. She's sitting on his bed. Walker waltzes out of the bathroom and sprawls out on it as well. Kadota contemplates shoving them both off, but that's not really his type of thing to do. He wonders if they'll get off if he opts not to tell a story. Not likely.

"Well. Fine."

"Story-_time! _Story-_time!_" they chant. "Dotachin's telling us his story!"

"It begins like this: once upon a time, there was a guy named Kadota. His name _wasn't _Dotachin." He keeps going over the lively protestations of his audience at this statement.

He thinks of his life as a child.

"Really, he lived a very boring life. Everything was quiet."

Nothing changed. Every day he went to school and came back. It was monotonous and safe. His emotions were like a still pond far removed from the crazy, rushing, roaring river called Ikebukuro.

"School was okay for him. It wasn't good or bad."

He had never stood out in school much. He doubts half his teachers knew his name by the end of the year. He got in fights and trouble as much as any other high-school boy. He didn't really make any friends, but he didn't have many enemies either, and altogether he was okay with that.

"And he moved to Ikebukuro. Which was okay, too."

He moved out of his parent's house eventually, of course. He doesn't have much contact with them anymore, but that's all right with him as well.

"He fought for the yellow color gang, until they became too filthy to associate with."

Of course he was a fighter by nature, but he wouldn't call himself a violent man. He fought because that was part of him, and even the fighting was ordinary to him.

"He formed his own gang. That's the point where he met two annoying people named Erika and Walker."

At some point, he had picked up the otaku pair and the fanboy—he doesn't really remember how, now, just that they were there one day. Life went on, but something was different now. Emotions were no longer a still pond for him—the surface of it was disturbed by the drops of rain from storms. They dragged him into things he didn't want to be in. He got in fights for them and they got in fights for him. Too often he was somehow in the middle of things for the sake of those other than himself, no longer the observer, like he had always been before. In some ways it was bad, because he was no longer independent. Before, his will had been so strong and clear, but now his path was muddied by the lives and wills of his friends. And sometimes, he really didn't feel like bailing them out of another situation, dealing with their loudness for yet another day. Their voices were chains around his neck and tacks banging around inside his head, like weighty, metallic burdens of pain. Wasn't his previous solitary existence so much more enjoyable? Wouldn't it just be easier to live for himself, and forget these intruders, these others?

But. He also began to feel things he hadn't felt before in his tranquil life—anger, annoyance, relief, joy—the joy that comes from escaping a selfish existence, the joy that lives during the time of the storm and goes with the departure of the rain. And he came to understand something special—that perhaps he was never meant to live in peace. That the pond was destined to be shattered, from the moment the storm itself poured the drops down to form it. That the existence of quiet and loneliness, so precious to him before, had been traded for a life more worth living, more _alive_, in so many ways.

But he'll never tell them that, even as a tiny smile curves his lips. He settles on finishing with, "One night, they pestered him for a story. And that's what he told them."

There is a disappointed silence.

"Awww, Dotachin! You said you'd tell a story!"

"I did."

"Come on, that wasn't a _real _story. No forbidden romances or midnight elopements or love triangles?"

"… What? I don't have any romances."

"But-but-_but_"

"Life isn't an anime or a story. It is what it is."

None of them end up getting a whole lot of sleep that night. Erika and Walker are just too hyped up, and they're off at six for the second day of the convention—and of course they keep Kadota up the whole time with their constant racket. But in the end, finally,_ finally_, it is quiet. Kadota watches the sun rise, hears the bird chirp and the city noise still a quiet hum. It is very silent. He closes his eyes, at peace.

He realizes his hand is on Walker's convention badge.

That idiot. How could he forget it? For a moment, Kadota struggles with himself. It would be so much easier to just remain here, in this moment of stillness—after all, he'll realize it sooner or later and come back for it, it's really not that big of a deal—

But, really, is this what he still wants?—

"Damnit!"

He strides out into the noisy city, and doesn't quite manage to fend off a smile. Guess he won't get any quiet after all.


	9. V is for Violence

AN: Who _doesn't_ love happy family fun time with the Oriharas?

**V is for Violence**

"You fucking _asshole_," she screams into his ear, and oh how her voice is particularly piercing today. His eyes bleed clear air from it. There are black holes in his skin.

"You've already told me"—

"Shut the fuck up."

Mairu bares her teeth at Izaya, hissing like a cat, toes digging in to the ground with anger. Izaya rolls his eyes, shedding blood like a damaged dam. He wriggles a little against his bonds. The pole behind his back is a steel corset, imprisoning his ribs in whalebones made of hurt.

"You _bastard. Look _at me." She hits him hard enough to stun a weaker man, the hard paintbrushes of her nails leaving more red streaks across his cheek. Her brother's hands involuntarily spasm behind the pole, like struggling birds. Izaya happens to have business to conduct, rather _fun _business, and he's at least a few hours late, and his stomach hurts, and he isn't in the mood of for this shit. This is a fucking _little girl_, for God's sake.

He manages to cage three of her fingers between his teeth before she can withdraw them. She shrieks, and tries to shake him off. There is a definite crunching sound, like the shattering of nails, and Izaya smiles, teeth all red-and-white, like peppermint candy—for adults only. He bites harder, the taste of his sister's pain gorgeous heaven to his parched tongue—

Kururi sighs almost calmly, steps up past her struggling twin, and drop-kicks Izaya hard.

"Any more shit to try? Better get it out of your system now, Iza-nii. Mairu's not happy."

Izaya breathes in dizzily, white constellations spreading out in his vision like an infection, letting the pull of his hair support the weight of his head. How many times has she done that in this hour alone? Time reels around the sky, drunk on that fine wine called pain, and reluctantly folds itself to the ground to the beat of his heart.

"Let me go, Kururi. I have things to do."

"I know, Iza-nii. But you're not going _anywhere_." A twisted love pushes out of her lips, dropping on his face like acid rain, and it burns.

The fact remains between them and him. Hissing, it rears its ugly head.

"Where _is it_?" screeches Mairu. "Give me my fucking cell phone back!"

"Mairu-chan—"

"Don't _fucking _call me that—"

"Fine, _imouto—_"

"Fuck you! I don't fucking want to be your little sister! Who the hell would ever want you to be their brother, anyway? Who the hell would want to be related to something like you? Everyone hates you! I hate you!" With every syllable, her voice rises.

"You yell any higher and only dogs will be able to hear you."

"I guess Iza-nii will be able to hear us just fine, then," interjects Kururi.

Izaya rolls his eyes. "Oh, thanks a lot—"

"Give me my phone!" wails Mairu.

"I didn't take it."

"Like hell you didn't!"

"Your phone's of no use to me, trust me." Izaya blows a bubble of blood out of his lips, looking insanely like a pouting child. "No one cares about all your little secrets. Did you know that, Mairu? You can sext or whatever it is you do with your little boyfriend all day long. No one gives a—"

The next punch almost knocks him out. Izaya starts trying to think of Shinra's number. He knows it's in his cell phone, but somehow he doubts his cell phone—any of them—is still intact at this point.

"I don't have a boyfriend!" Mairu bellows.

Izaya sees the way her eyes slide sideways to Kururi.

"Yes, she does." The fact is that Izaya really doesn't have a clue where Mairu lost her cell phone. The boyfriend was a shot in the dark. But that look—he knows for sure now. Izaya decides that he doesn't mind things this way; it's slightly more amusing, anyway.

"No, I don't!"

Kururi's eyes scrunch up.

Her sniffle is very loud.

Mairu is torn for a second between killing Izaya on the spot and comforting Kururi.

She decides Izaya isn't of that much importance.

Dropping her hands, she brings their blood-stained brilliance up to Kururi's chubby cheeks. Kururi sniffles again, a thin line of snot threatening to break down her face. Izaya watches black spots dart across his vision, slightly amused.

"S-so it's tr-true…" hiccups Kururi.

"What're you talking about? Nothing, nothing's true! I don't have a—of course I don't have a b-boyfriend!"

Kururi catches the little glitch in Mairu's speech. That's all it takes to start her wailing.

"I c-c-can't believe y-you would do s-something l-l-like that—"

"Do what? I haven't done anything! I swear, Kururi, dearest, love, I don't have a boyfriend!"

"W-well, _Iza-n-nii _seemed to th-think otherwise—"

Mairu gives him a look that informs Izaya of his imminent demise, probably to be performed using many sharp objects and drawn out in as unpleasant a way as possible. Mairu can put up with Izaya hurting her. But hurting Kururi—that's reason for damnation, and Mairu's more than happy to play the avenging angel. Who is he, stupid older brother, to get in the way of her sisterly love?

He's going to die, this time.

Turning back to Kururi, she says, "Don't listen to anything Iza-nii says, he's stupid and evil anyway—"

"Oh, listen to the angel speak," drawls Izaya.

Izaya's very lucky that Kururi's bawling her head off by this point. Otherwise it'd probably be another head that'd be in danger.

"You." Mairu points a skinny shaking finger at Izaya. Her rage is palpable, like the blood on his teeth. "I'm coming back for you. And when I do." Izaya eyes the blood on her middle-school knuckles. His blood. She doesn't even say anything after that. Mairu knows all the Oriharas have very active imaginations.

In the two and a half minutes they leave him—what a _stupid _thing to do—he manages to yank his wrist out from behind the pole, saw the duct tape off his other hand with the razorblade, relocate his shoulder against the wall on the second try, and limp off.

On the way, he makes sure to shut Mairu's two little parakeets in the stove, and turns the heat up—all—the way. Oh, how she loves those adorable little things. He watches their stupidity, the little birdies trapped in the horrible heat of the stove.

Guess she'll have to get new ones.

He sighs and rotates his shoulder a little, wincing. That'll leave an ache for a few weeks, at least. Damn little sisters. But he has to admit, the world wouldn't be as fun without them.

"Until next time," he says to the empty air, and vanishes.

The next thought on his mind is where to get a new cell phone.


	10. M is for Metamorphosis

**M is for Metamorphosis **

It's the third period of the school day, right before lunch. _Ah. That's right. Biology, _supplies a distant voice in Anri's head.

Normally, everyone would be pretty sleepy by now. But today the class is agitated. They sit up in their seats, squinting their eyes. Whispers scurry across the room.

"Ewww…"

"That's totally disgusting."

"Ugh. Just… ugh."

"Isn't it a bit tasteless, to be teaching that right before lunch?"

"I don't want to look! I can't look!"

"Quiet down, class," mumbles their middle-aged teacher. He dabs sweat off his forehead. Despite his own words, he looks remarkably discomfited. "So, today, we'll be learning about…"

Anri stares.

She doesn't find it disgusting.

She finds it—familiar.

The projector stretches the image on the board before the horrified class. The calm voice of the narrator clashes horribly with the mass of oozing flesh writhing in pain in the video. A black shadow squats over it. Knife in hand. Its eyes are pitiless pits of shining black.

"The parasitic wasp injects its eggs into the caterpillar…"

She watches as the wasp stabs the caterpillar. Again. And again. The victim's green gelatin body writhes, mirrored in the lenses of Anri's glasses. Anri imagines it going into shock, falling to the floor. Its destiny changed, forever. Would its blood be red, like human blood?

Red blood, human blood—she is familiar with that. The thud echoes in her ears, again, and again, of bodies hitting the pavement. She's never killed anyone with Saika—Saika is made for loving, after all. But, after slashing that many bodies, Anri has to wonder if she's capable of doing something like that. If she had to…

Somehow, she has no doubts.

"The larvae take over its body…"

Just like the way Saika took over the bodies it slashed, made them into its children. Anri hadn't bothered trying to figure out how Saika worked. It was an enchanted blade—something that didn't belong in reality.

Does something like her, its owner, belong in reality, then? Maybe it would be better if she didn't. But she has learned, nothing in this city is normal. The so-called everyday reality—there is no such thing. It's just an illusion, spun from the longings of humans for a nonexistent normality.

But that doesn't make her existence any less wrong.

Inside the caterpillar's body, the maggots writhe, fleshy white sacks of meat. Switching back to an outside view, the camera reveals the caterpillar's translucent skin, stretched taut. Unnatural movements bulge against its surface, threatening to pierce the skin, to spill out. The narrator informs them that it is "near time for the larvae to be born."

The class groans in disgust. One girl mimes sticking a finger down her throat. Makes a faint retching noise.

Retching. Throwing up. _Vomit-worthy. _Is this what people think of parasites, like her?

_Why shouldn't they think like that? _Tugging down her skirt, Anri folds her legs demurely. Her pencil lies limp between her fingers, her notebook blank, unwritten-in. What had Harima Mika thought of her, after all? Hadn't she been living off her just the way this wasp's children were living off the caterpillar? Perhaps the image hadn't been quite so grotesque, quite so violent, but the idea was the same. Just the word _parasite_ is enough to evoke feelings of revulsion in most people, suggesting something unnatural, unfair, unwanted. Cowardice is disgusting; everyone hates a clingy person. The label certainly fits her—parasite, leech, bloodsucker_. _Living off a host, keeping her distance from the others who might find her out.

But Harima Mika, she thinks, has rejected her. Harima Mika is no longer her host.

_Host. _

Her eyes crawl sideways, first one way, then the other, their movements hidden behind a screen of hair. Fidgeting, her fingers close on the pencil.

Blonde hair and brown eyes. Black hair and grey eyes.

Her new hosts—

No.

Anri refuses it.

_Imagine yourself pushing the idea away, _she thinks_. Reject it, as if you are rejecting something physically_. An idea isn't something she can cut, but even someone like she has enough of her own strength to control it.

She doesn't want to think of them that way.

It's impossible for her to love them, but she can at least not prey off of them. They are healthy, young, vibrant. She refuses to weigh them down. If they are determined to sweep her along in their current, and they do seem to be, then she will accept that. But Anri refuses to fall on them.

Anri looks down. There, two feet, encased in school-approved shoes. She can walk. On her face, two lips. She can talk. In her head, what's speaking right now—a mind. She can think. She has her memories and her pains, but who doesn't in this world?

It is past time she made her own way in life.

"Soon, the caterpillar is paralyzed by the larvae inside it. They inject a…"

Anri suppresses a smile.

After all, things have changed. She's gotten to know the boys well. She knows there's no way she could paralyze something like those two. Kida, the self-titled blonde hurricane of love, a winking whirlwind tossing out coy glances and smiling words. Mikado, with all the quiet, hidden charge of storm clouds gathering over the city at night. They are forces of nature.

There's no doubt that they will become something amazing, some powers truly to be feared—or admired—even in a city as full of admired things as Ikebukuro. Their destinies are long paths ahead of them, filled with unseen turns and a million forks. Without that parasite to prey off of them, the caterpillars can look forward to full lives in the air. She imagines their jeweled wings catching the favor of the sun as it smiles their way.

And as for Anri—

She holds no hopes of becoming something that beautiful. But at the least, she can change, too. _Something homely_, she thinks, a smile tracing her mouth. A beetle, maybe?

No matter. There is still hope. She _can_ escape her abnormal cage of stillness and join the strange parade of the so-called everyday.

The future is running before her, and Anri is determined to catch up.

Involuntarily, her hand dances across the white page. A single lead mark, two—_IB_, a simple sketch of a butterfly.

The page is blank no longer.


	11. W is for White Day

**W is for White Day**

"Ah, don't be ridiculous!"

Kida scolded him. Mika sighed and rubbed the back of his head. It seemed Kida was always scolding him, when it came to matters of love.

_Love?_

"Ah…!"

_Where the heck did that come from? _

Kida's words crumbled off in the middle.

"You're blushing!"

"No I'm not!"

"Don't lie. Your face is the color of the sunset."

"The sunset… why do you have to describe things in such a weird way?"

"It's not my fault you have weird thoughts."

"What do my weird thoughts have to do with your—"

"Erotic!" squealed Kida. "You have weird erotic thoughts. Mhm, about Anri, too. I know it! I can seem them buzzing in the air around you, _vyun-vyun-byun_, like little flies—like little Cupids!"

"Er-Ero…" _Why is it always about erotic things with him?_ "You don't have to bring that up all the time, Masaomi."

"I absolutely do! Don't be ridiculous!"

"You… you just said that, like, two minutes ago…"

"Because it's still true! Listen, today is White Day. My single friend, do you even understand what that means?"

"I _know_ what White Day is."

"That's not what I asked. I asked if you understood it."

"Do you expect me to see much of a difference?"

Kida stopped for a moment. Shrugging, he turned away. "If you don't understand, then I guess it's your loss."

"Whatever, man. You still haven't told me where we're going."

"Chocolate."

"Sorry?"

"Cho-co-la-te store! It's the best thing for White Day! Oh, I can just see all the lovely girls, waiting for me to drop presents in their hands…"

"_All_ the girls? How many girls gave you chocolate on Valentine's Day anyway?"

A pause. "That is immaterial to the conversation—"

"O-_oooh_, I see. Well, I guess it's not my problem if you're going to be shoving White Day presents into the arms of girls who don't even know you exist—"

"_Baka! _They know I exist. Females these days are just too shy. Though I guess demure-type beauty is good, too, even if it's kind of old-fashioned."

"Girls aren't chocolates. You can't just pick and choose which type or whatever you want."

"But I know what type you like, Mikado!" Kida laughed. "The blush is back with a vengeance."

"I d-don't have a ty—"

"The Anri-type! _Ero-kawaii, _the _megane-_girl with the big boobs! There's a category you're interested in. She's quiet and shy, but Ryuugamine Mikado is excited by the thoughts of the sexy side of her he hasn't seen yet—"

"There _is_ nosexy side!"

A raised eyebrow, a blonde arch of doubt. "Oh, so you don't find Sonohara Anri-chan sexy?"

_Not this question again—_

Mikado caught sight of bright plastic lettering and cheerful signs informing him of thirty percent discounts in bold marker colors.

"Oh! Look, I guess that's the store."

As they pushed through the revolving door together, Kida gave him a look that let Mikado know quite clearly that he was not off the hook.

Luckily, the conversation was postponed, if only temporarily, by the lure of the goods in the store. Mikado didn't know about his friend's erotic or whatever tendencies, but he had to give him points for class. The store was enormous, covering two sparkling-clean stories. The shelves were lined with neat colored boxes. The attendants—school-age girls dressed in neat uniforms—didn't stop smiling, even faced with the storm of bad pick-up lines and enthusiastic winks that Masaomi immediately sent their way.

Slowly picking his way away from Kida, Mikado tried to amble casually over to an enormous display. The chocolates were laid out on tiers, like a wedding cake, rising at least six or seven feet into the air.

"It's rather pretty, isn't it?"

Mikado jumped.

A spiky black head of hair peeked around the display. Owlish eyes stared at him through glasses lens. "Ryuugamine Mikado. Celty knows you, right?"

"A-ah… Yes. Sh-Shinra-san, was it?"

"You remember me!" The doctor seemed alarmingly cheery. Beaming like a child, he gestured Mikado over. "Well, I guess I'm a rememberable guy. Though Celty would probably just call me weird… Hey, come over here for a second. I need to ask your advice on something."

Mikado paced around to the other side of the display.

Halfway there, his knee whacked into what seemed to be a low wall. Stumbling, Mikado sprawled to the ground.

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah..."

The low wall moved.

Mikado yelped.

Shinra sighed. Offering Mikado a hand, he said, "I told you you shouldn't be sitting down there, Shizuo. I'm surprised no one tripped on you earlier."

"Whatever."

Bartender outfit. Blonde hair. The smell of cigarette smoke.

Mikado stuffed a hand in his mouth to keep himself from yelling.

That hadn't been a wall. What was Shizuo Heiwa-fucking-jima doing here?

"Hey, Mikado—"

Mikado's head whipped back around.

"Silly Mikado. What're you doing lying on the floor like that? Do you think you're a mop or something?"

"Masaomi—"

"Yo, Shizuo, Kida!"

All four of them turned.

"I _thought_ it was you."

"Kadota."

"Kadota-san."

"Eh? I thought everyone called you Dotachin?"

"Only you call me that, idiot otaku."

"I'm not an idi—oh, hey Shizuo!"

Half a smirk pulls at Shizuo's lips. "I see you brought the whole damn van gang."

"Well, minus miss Karisawa." Saburo elbowed Walker, snickering. "That's why this one is here."

"No! Well, fine, yes. But we're here for Dota—"

"—I _told_ you not to call me that—"

"—chin, too."

Shizuo blinked at Kadota. "I didn't know you were dating someone."

"I'm not—you can ignore Walker over there. I just got some from some girls I knew. It's like a duty to pay them back, so…"

"Romantic duty…" mused Shinra, examining the display.

"It's not a duty for you, you stupid doctor, and you know it. Anyway, hurry up and pick something so we can get out of here."

"Who'd he get chocolates from, anyway?"

"Oh, don't sound so _surprised, _Kadota—"

"I'm just asking."

"Celty," supplied Shizuo. "She gave some to both of us, and the stupid doctor insisted on paying her back. So."

"I-I see. Are you going to buy some too?"

"I guess. Since we're here."

"Who's Celty?"

"Yeah, wait, who's that?"

"None of your business."

"Dotachin, that's harsh."

"Well, it _isn't_."

"Um," squeaked Mikado, eyes darting from one dangerous person to the next. Underground doctor. The strongest man in Ikebukuro. The van gang. It was getting worse and worse. He failed utterly to count himself and Kida in, leaders of the Dollars and the Yellow Scarves. "Well, wow, it's been nice talking to you all, but I really have to go now—"

"No you don't."

Mikado winced. "Masaomi!"

"Where's the rush?" Kida leaned against the display, smiling.

Was he enjoying his discomfort?

Mikado opened his mouth to give one of several very compelling reasons to leave that were swirling around his head.

When—

"_A-re, a-re._"

Total silence hit the store like an earthquake in the wake of the cheery voice.

"What a crowd we have here today! And it looks like everyone's having so much fun, too."

In the following stillness, a fur-trimmed hood made its way to the display. Izaya's leather shoes brought themselves to a stop right next to Shizuo. He hummed, fingering a box of chocolate. Brown eyes refused to glance in the direction of a certain young man with a vein bulging in his temple.

"Mmm, chocol—"

Mikado flung himself to the floor one second before the display exploded into the air.

Face pressed to the tiles, he hissed at Kida, who was similarly positioned, "Now do you think we should go?"

A box of chocolates landed on Kida's head. Pieces of the candy sprinkled out onto his hair. In the background, a shop girl was screaming.

"Maybe you're right."

"_Maybe_!"

"Shizuo!" yelled Shinra, who was being pulled to his feet by Saburo. "Shizuo, don't—"

"Wait for me!" bellowed the ex-bartender. "This'll take just a minute!"

"I doubt that, Shizu-chan."

Mikado blinked. How had Izaya gotten all the way over there? And not a speck of anything on his clothes, either.

"You stupid _flea_—"

"I guess I'll be going, everyone!" said Izaya cheerily. He even had the cheek to wave. "Have a good White Day!"

"_ARGH_—"

An enormous heart-shaped box flew through the air. Izaya caught it by the ribbons.

"For me, Shizu-chan? But I'm delighted. I don't even remember giving you any—"

Mikado winced as an especially large plastic counter hit the spot where the informant had last been standing.

"A-aand they're off," said Walker, crawling up to his knees. "Whoa, Shizuo's really going very fast. He's like a speed-demon—"

"Now I'm going to have to chase after him," sighed Shinra.

"I wouldn't worry about that," commented Kadota, peering into the distance. "He'll probably come back to you."

"Hah. You mean before or after he gets hit by a truck, again?"

"Do you think we're going to have to pay for damages?" Mikado asked nervously, glancing around the half-destroyed store. "They kind of, um, _upset _a lot of stuff."

"I'm not going to stick around to find out," laughed Kida. "Grab your gifts and let's go."

Outside the store, Mikado sucked in a breath. Cars lay in tangled lines, beeping madly while their drivers cursed at each other. A parking meter was conspicuously missing from its normal spot, the concrete where it had been rooted crumbled and heaved upwards.

"—kado?"

"Eh?"

"I said, are you okay? I didn't see you get injured or anything." Without waiting for an answer, Kida piled several plastic bags into Mikado's hands. "Here, help me hold these, or else I'm gonna fall over."

"I—er, okay." He held docile hands out for the bags. "I was just thinking—"

"About how ero-cute Anri is? So you've come around! Wise decision, my friend—"

"I wasn't!"

"Wasn't thinking it, or don't want to admit it?"

"There's no difference!"

"Of course there's a difference! Don't be ridiculous!"

"That's like the third time—"

What Mikado had wanted to say was, _I was just thinking we live in an amazing city. _

**AN: **My excuse for this is that I wanted to write something light, and have fun with chaotic dialogue. Yeah for White Day, even though it was invented by a candy company or something!


	12. H is for Hero

**H is for Hero**

_Ah. It broke._

Would be, maybe, what a bystander would say. If his life were a manga.

Walker is lying on the floor. He is eleven years old. He can be excused, for wishing.

His eyes roll to the side. Laboring to focus them, Walker finally manages to get a decent image.

His arm. It shouldn't be bent at that angle.

If he was the protagonist of a manga, he'd get up right now. He'd stagger to the hospital, blood angled on his face in the most delicate ways. As he'd walk through the door, the pain would overtake him at last. Teeth clenched, refusing to make a sound, he would collapse to the floor—because heroes don't _faint_ and word choice is important, for a writer. Landing on the soft bosom of the F-cup heroine in her too-tight nurse's outfit, he would smile before his eyes finally closed, sure that the gentle angel's ministrations would bring him back to health.

No.

Too late.

Walker screwed everything up.

First of all, he wasn't silent. He knows he screamed. It's still echoing in his ears, rolling around the inside of his head, scratching at his skull.

He certainly collapsed, but he's nowhere near a hospital. In fact, he lies at the crime scene itself, the house of his parents—Walker refuses to call it _home_ because it's not, and word choice is important for a writer.

There is no heroine. F-cup or otherwise. He'd even settle for a flat-chested girl, right about now, but there is no female around except for his mother, and _she_—

Suffice it to say, there is no angel, and there will be no ministrations.

Walker doesn't collapse, because he is already on the floor.

He faints.

Distinctions like these are important.

()

Walker prides himself on the way he looks at life. He has an artistic eye. Like a richness coating the back of his tongue, he savors the look of things. The precise words to describe the situation arise lightly to his mind like a gold foam, like weightless pearls. It's been like this as long as he can remember. Destiny, maybe, marked him to write, draw, imagine, create.

Like right now.

Location: The backyard of the Yumasakis.

Time: Two in the afternoon, a damp August.

Scenario: a dismembered squirrel.

_Ah. It's still alive._

Would be, maybe, what a bystander would say. If his life were a manga, and there were a horrified bystander.

But there isn't. It's just him and his curiosity and the dying creature.

The mid-summer sun beats down as Walker squats on the lush lawn. Humidity rises from the emerald grass. His parent's flowers bloom in neat profusion along the side beds, cheery pastel heads nodding stupidly. Daddy and Mommy always did love gardening.

Too tame, too tame for Walker. Rather—in the flowers and among the grass, deliciously alive, scampering creatures just waiting for him to—

His hands are slick with twin gloves of red, and little jewel-droplets of the deepest ruby are scattered around his bare feet. The rich tang of blood rises from the broken beast like the smell of wheat from a loaf of bread. Walker pokes it hard and it twitches, making strangled noises. Breathing the sound in, Walker finds it remarkable how he can lose himself in the sensation of summer. How he can forget the bruises plastering his body.

The bruises—

His leg throbs. It is a decidedly unbeautiful shade. Pulsing blue, faded green, sickly yellow—what a hideous rainbow. Displeased, Walker frowns. Rainbow is the wrong word for it. That implies cheeriness. Hope. And his leg implies—

_Distraction! _

Quickly, Walker licks the blood off his fingers. Winces. An unpleasant flavor—sharp and too thick. Not artistic, either. It tastes just the same as human blood, and he knows that taste too well, knows what it's like to be lying on the floor, thirty minutes later, your head cracked open and your blood and possibly your teeth pooling in your mouth like melted glass—

_Distraction! _

The knife he used, Walker thinks hazily, looks especially pretty in the sun. Like a shard of glass.

He pulls the blade over. It's new and shiny and reflects his face perfectly. He studies himself in the mirror of it.

Squinty eyes. Long jaw. _Ignore the black eye._

"I look like a—a weasel."

That's the right animal for him. A wily survivor. Not bad, but not good either. Not exactly the face of a hero.

A small part of him says, _Never mind the looks. Would a hero kill squirrels in his parent's yard? _

"No," says Walker. Regretfully. "I'll never be a hero. Maybe a sidekick, at best."

Walker may like to play pretend, but this one fact, at least, he sticks to. The harem, and the admiration, the trumpet fanfare and the welcoming arms of a hometown—these are not for him, he feels.

Walker waits for a hero.

()

Walker finds one—Kadota Kyohei.

Dotachin is an honorable man, a man with values. Dotachin doesn't cheat, lie, torture. Dotachin is—good.

Dotachin's not like him.

Dotachin could be a hero.

He's totally the lone-wolf type, probably the kind with a dark and tragic past. Striding towards the future, holding the past at arm's length, the picture of mystery with a cloak of darkness around him! The lost nobleman, disinherited by the whirl of urban life! Perfect!

Walker sticks around.

Still spinning himself that fantasy world.

()

And as for the heroine.

The first time Erika lets him sleep over, she seems a little confused. It is excusable. They are in the first stages of high school. Walker has only known her for a month or so.

He imagines it from her point of view—doorbell ringing in a nice, clean suburban neighborhood. She patters downstairs in pajamas and plaid slippers, the latest light-novel hanging from her hand. Then, the grotesque puffiness that is his face mars the peace of it all. The fluorescent light flinches back from him. Karisawa stuffs a mouth in her hand, maybe to keep herself from screaming at this mass of flesh that has appeared on her doorstep.

A creature out of _Higurashi_? No. Just Walker Yumasaki. Just a man, or a boy, or something between.

She is a woman of instinct, Karisawa is. She doesn't ask how or why or any of those thousand other bothersome questions people like the police are always so fond of spewing. She just opens the door.

For letting in a creature that didn't belong, Walker is grateful to Erika.

For other things too. For example, she drives him to the hospital that one time. She speeds like a madman, her too-short legs barely able to reach the pedals. No license, of course—Erika is fourteen and doing illegal things, for him, and it feels like a triumph.

Half-conscious in the back seat, Walker doesn't know whether to call it bravery, or madness. Devotion, maybe? Words swirl around his head. What a great chase scene this would make in a shonen manga. Young girl swerving through the dark, eyes on the goal. The lights flashing by showing her expression—determined. Devoted, maybe.

Day after day, Erika sits next to Walker. Talks to him, even though he can't answer, what with his wired-shut jaw.

When the wires come out, Walker sees her cry for the first time.

Through her tears, she makes him promise.

"Just s-swear to m-m-me—"

"I swear. Whatever you want—"

"Swear you'll n-never go back th-there," she hiccups. "P-puh-romise me."

Walker just stares at her.

Okay, so her eyes are puffy and red, and they never are in the animes. It's not sunset, either, and the flat midday light is blatantly unflattering. And her tear isn't drawing a neat line down her cheek. No, her tears are streaming down in misshapen rivers, criss-cross all over the place. In addition, Erika has snot coming out of her nose.

But what about himself? No neat line of blood here, either. His face is still a squishy pulp, his lips swollen and split. In the animes, the heroes always look cool, even when they're getting beaten up. And it's always by their opponents, never by something as silly and uncool as a parent. The hero is usually an orphan. God knows Walker wishes he was, sometimes, lots of times, but he knows he isn't.

Walker sighs.

"Okay. I promise."

He offers Erika his sleeve.

Yup. A streak of boogers, right there, for sure. No more mister cool guy act for him, not with that on his arm.

In fact, this was never a scene from an anime, though it feels like it should be.

Even better—this is real life.

_Reality. _Walker savors the word on his tongue, and he likes it.

It might taste the best of them all.

()

Does he still think he's a sidekick?

Yes.

But can even sidekicks be heroes sometimes, when the situation needs it?

_Yes, _decides Walker—_decides_, not _says _or _thinks, _because word choice is important for a writer.

_I will write my own story. _

Walker carries Mikajima Saki out of the burning van. He does not look back.


	13. L is for Luck

**L is for Lucky**

Izaya reads online somewhere in his endless hours of internet browsing that striking it rich in a Powerball drawing is as likely as dying in a vending machine accident. When his eyes get to the vending machine part of the sentence, he smiles and thinks of Ikebukuro. Maybe he should buy a lottery ticket, before his death by cold beverage and hard metal—a refreshing way to die, he thinks, rather pleased.

Not, of course, that Shizu-chan could ever kill him. That's about as likely as the dog killing the cat which he's doomed to chase eternally. Everyone knows the cat always gets away, with its superior agility, speed, and brains. Cats are lucky. Cats have nine lives. Izaya's not even scared of water, for God's sake. Poor, oblivious, unhappy Shizu-chan, though, just keeps trying and trying. He doesn't get it at all.

Izaya decides this discovery will make for an energizing, cheerful topic of conversation over a rare breakfast with both his sisters. There's nothing quite like a liberal dash of violence and morbidity with your coffee in the morning, which all three siblings drink black.

Mairu's looking grumpier than normal this morning, and more than a little dangerous, so Izaya directs his blinding smile at Kururi instead.

"Hey. Kururi."

"Hm?"

"Do you think it's more likely to win the lottery or die in some sort of vending machine accident?"

There's a moment of awkward silence.

Mairu butts in to the conversation, scowling. "What kind of a _stupid_ question is that? Have you become even more idiotic than usual, Iza-nii?"

Izaya tactfully ignores her. "Well?"

"Well…" Kururi's thinking face is almost adorable, unlike her sister's. "I think it depends on the person."

"Oh? Like what?"

"If it's you, then of course it's more likely you'll die in a vending machine accident." Izaya wants to laugh at how matter of fact she is when she says, "Because, of course, everyone knows that man is going to kill you someday."

Mairu, who has been sitting sulkily in the corner, gulping down her coffee, is unable to resist joining the conversation at this mention of possible bodily harm to her brother. "Vending machines—wait, are we talking about Shizuo?"

"Oh, Mairu." Izaya shakes his head sadly. "Why did you have to go and ruin a perfectly good morning?"

"It wasn't a good morning. After all, I saw _your_ face," states Mairu, pulling a disgusted face. "But if it was Kasuka-kun, I wouldn't mind seeing his face at all… every morning… for the rest of my life…" Her voice instantly becomes dreamy, and this sets Kururi off.

"Oh, Yuuhei-kun… he's just so cute…"

Izaya has the gall to sneeze loudly a few minutes later in the middle of the heated discussion involving Kasuka's hair that follows. The instant, chilly silence of his sisters informs Iza-nii that this reminder of his presence is distasteful, indiscreet, and unappreciated—the three adjectives, Izaya reflects, that his sisters seem to like tacking on to _all _the parts of his existence.

Mairu grins. "Maybe Izaya's getting _sick_. Maybe he'll even _die_. We'll show his bloody _corpse _to Heiwajima-san, and he'll be happy about it. Together, we'll shove it in the dumpster while a happy song plays. The sky will be blue. Heiwajima-san will be happy. In fact, Heiwajima-san will be so happy that he'll let us move in as a reward, and then we can live with Kasuka!"

Kururi looks like she's about to pass out at the thought of it. "That would be… that would just be perfect…" She looks at Izaya with eyes that enthusiastically will him to miraculously fall over dead.

Izaya smiles a little and supposes that he won't get a straight answer out of the twins after all. He lets their conversation fade in to background noise, and thinks to himself that maybe someone was talking about him.

()

Shizuo reads online somewhere that striking it rich in a Powerball drawing is as likely as dying in a vending machine accident. Funny how they seem to think the comparison illustrates slim chances. It doesn't seem that unlikely to him that _someone_ he knows will die that way. What the hell, maybe he should even buy a lottery ticket.

Over a rare breakfast with ever-busy Kasuka, whom he sees on a rather unfortunately infrequent basis, Shizuo decides to bring up the topic.

"Kasuka."

"Hm?"

"Do you think it's more likely to die in a vending machine accident or to win the lottery?"

Kasuka remains unfazed, as expected of him, and he looks up and scans his brother's eyes. He realizes that Shizuo's entirely serious. He's even abandoned the milk glass in favor of the answer to the question. He considers his brother's propensity for random acts of violence and the throwing of large objects, including, memorably, a refrigerator.

"Depends."

"Depends how?"

"On whether or not you're around."

Shizuo snorts milk out of his nose by accident and laughs. He pauses, allowing the flavor of the moment to sink in, before answering.

"Damn right it is."

"So. Who is it who's pissing you off this time? Is it that Orihara person?"

"Don't know. Everyone, I guess. Him too, of course."

"Hm. Sounds normal."

And this is what Shizuo finds comforting about his brother's presence, that Kasuka doesn't judge him, just subtly pushes Shizuo in the right direction with his nonchalance and calm attitude. Shizuo might not show it, but he appreciates it.

Suddenly, Shizuo sneezes.

"Bless you."

A pause while Shizuo snuffles.

Kasuka smiles a little. "Someone must be talking about you."

()

A few days later, this strange scenario wraps itself up on a narrow street in Ikebukuro.

"I…za…ya…_kun_…!"

"Shizu-chan." The greeting could almost pass as polite—minus the knife flashing in Izaya's hand, that is. "How lucky of me, that I've managed to find you already! Or maybe you missed me, and it was _you _that found _me_?"

His expression suggests delight. This is intolerable to Shizuo.

"Fucking flea! I told you to keep your scrawny ass out of here!" And Shizuo quickly dislodges the closest vending machine, intention to kill set to one hundred percent.

Izaya smiles.

"Did you know, the other day, Shizu-chan, I saw that one's chances of winning the lottery are about the same as a dying in a vending machine accident? I talked about it with Mairu and Kururi at breakfast."

Shizuo blinks. For a moment, he remembers his conversation with his own sibling, remembers the sneeze and what Kasuka said. For a moment, he lets the wonder of it sink in. Then his mouth changes to a decidedly unfriendly grin.

"Then I guess it really _is_ your lucky day, flea."

The vending machine flies through the air, and Izaya's delighted laughter rips through the air a moment before a resounding crash drowns it out.


End file.
